Peter's back! After Vibraslap and Resonator Guitars, he has a Christmas treat for you: The Blaster Beam:
It's a monster: 18 feet of machined aluminium, with numerous strings and moveable (sometimes motorised) pickups. Japanese new-ager Kitaro plays his with a bow (like in the picture), or you can use an old artillery shell as a slide.
It was invented by ginger child star turned new age music guru Craig Huxley, who played Kirk's Nephew in Star Trek in the sixties. Ironically, the Blaster’s most famous appearance was as the voice of "Veja" in 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' in 1979. You can hear its awesome vibrations at the beginning of this clip. So the Beam was ready to sink into weird instrument obscurity. But something very strange happened. According to this report, when Craig Huxley played his Blaster Beam at a concert in Central Park a decade ago "over a dozen women reported having intensely sexual feelings from the Beam sound, up to and including orgasm".
Even a synth version of the sound can have the same effect. "When, in flipping through my Xpander presets, I came to a sound called "THE BEAM" in honor of Huxley's instrument, the expression on her face abruptly changed. When I asked her what was wrong, she blinked for a moment and said, "Please play that again. Louder." I did so, and had the odd experience of watching her eyes glaze over as she half fell into a chair breathing hard. "I...*like* that sound," she managed to get out in a whisper." You can download the preset from the site, assuming you're one of the 2,000 people with an Oberheim Xpander.

Huxley used to be known as Craig Huntley...in the late '60's he was a 14 year old jazz piano prodigy, poppin' out vinyl of real book tunes with his similarly youthfully prodigious trio (featuring microscopic bassist Jay-Jay Wiggins. Alas, he burnt out before he finished puberty, and took to avant garde noise making as therapy apparently.

There may be more conventional ways to produce a female orgasm, but these can't normally be done in a public space without being arrested. I am definitely very curious about this and would love a pure sample. Of course, if this does have the claimed effect, then us males may become obsolete :-(

Project SyntheSex rears its head again ... for the original articles on the patch and various other anecdotal information realted to it (and music+sex), try EMUSIC-L Volume 9, Issue 3 (that's from back in 1989, folks!)

A couple months ago, Playboy ran an article in it's magazine about female orgasm because of sound. It stated that a constant tone of 33Hz was the most arousing to most women. Close proximity to the speaker produced orgasm (yes, picture that woman on the speaker in Private Parts).

Try it out for yourself. http://www.liquidinjuredhearing.com/online_vibro.phpI had my woman sit on the woofer. She responded to 33Hz & 35Hz. ENjoy.

The Dead were using The Beam long before Huxley 'invented' it. I believe Mickey Hart was the first to put one together, and theirs was bigger than this, and used much larger gauge cables, that would be struck with pipes, rocks, etc. Electrical pickups brought the sound to the PA system.

It was paired up with "The Beast", a set of massively oversized Tom-Tom drums, suspended in the air.

"The Beam & The Beast" - see Mickey Hart's book "Planet Drum" or possibly any other decent Dead bio for more info.

I've rented that hunk of junk. We've called it the "shit beam". The guy put one acoutic guitar pickup underneath a width of strings that is about a foot across. I admit that It looks impressive but so do 6 foot sub sandwiches.

I have a set of pull-down attic stairs with big springs (you can see one in the picture) that sound *exactly* like this thing. Every I time I go into the attic I feel like I'm going through that giant v-ger aperature from Star Trek: The Movie. If you stand about half way up the steps you've got one on each side of your head about 8 inches from each ear - hit them at the same time with some odd bits from the attic and it's quite a stereophonic experience. But if my wife ever orgasmed she never mentioned it.

i've been custom building an instrument dubbed THE KESTREL 920 that creates the same ambiance/dynamic as the beam but utilizing found objects mostly with an integration of organic materials for their warm resonation properties.

for a sample of THE KESTREL 920 solo check out track #7:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/glennweyant2

there is also a short sample here:

http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/om20250.html

and a bit of media coverage for more:

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/arts/Content?oid=oid:65551

if you are interested in knowing more, purchasing one, having one custom made to meet your needs, or want a discography list feel free to email me.

i worked for Craig in the late 80s/early 90s and by that time the Blaster Beam had been relegated to a storage area in the upstairs area of The Enterprise, the recording studio he owned and operated. All it really did at that point was to get in the way as there was music inventory from the now defuct Sonic Atmospheres label up there. I made sure to kick it everytime I had to try and walk around it.

Sorry "MuffWiggler", as a former Deadhead, Dead stage crew member, AND personal friend of Francisco Lupica, and the "Cosmic Beam Experience" i need to debunk your patenetly FALSE statement. The Dead , aka Dan Healy/Mickey Hart did NOT originate the idea. They DID blantantly borrow/ripoff the idea by taking extensive photgraphs and measurements of the original instrument....also for what it is worth, Mickey Hart or any other Dead member never came close to the fully being able to play the instrument with any intensity. The original playing by Lupica was SO FAR BEYOND what anyone else, before or after has done...for M Hart, it was just one of many, many, too many "toys". For Francisco Lupica on the other hand, regularly produced a truly Cosmic Expereince, of monumental dimensions. With aboslutely no need of Garcia's ridiculously self-absorbed "noodling around". Let's get the story straight, and give credit, where credit is due....by the way, Where is Francisco now? We need you!

Yeah, Cosmic Beam. Lupica was on a late-night TV show in the 70s and gave a long demonstration. 1974? 1975? It was that Late Night with Tom [can't recall the name, the very deadpan fella] ahhh, Snyder.

The Late Night Show?

Snyder also had the Sex Pistols (didn't see) and the Clash on later shows.

To say that Mickey Hart didn't play The beam with any intensity is silly. And calling Garcia's playing noodling reveals FORMER hostility.

Anyway, I was always fascinated by The Beam and found Craig's CD, Francisco's LP, and even saw a Beam monochord at an Experimental Musical Instruments show in San Francisco. It does bother me that I never heard Mickey mention his debt to others -- and what he called 'The Beast' seems almost exactly a reworking of Francisco's setup. Now I know part of the reason why he didn't talk about it much.

The Dead have many examples of The Beam in the Drum>Space sections of their shows. One good one is 'drums' here:http://www.archive.org/details/gd85-09-07.sbd.miller.18102.sbeok.shnf

Francisco Lupica is the original master of the Cosmic Beam Sound and has been ripped off by Radioactive Records in England (Same people to rip of Jimi Hendrix). Francisco Lupica still lives in Los Angeles in Topanga, still has a Venice P.O. Box which by the way you can even see on the rip off cd of his legendary album (Limited to 3000 copies). Francisco Lupica is planning to release the original Master Tapes and other material of the Cosmic Beam soon! Watch for his releases!

I can take this thing a couple of steps further. I played bass in an acid rock trio with Lupica called The Travel Agency. We hung out with this cool artist up on Mountain Road in Santa Barbara who built the Beam. He got the idea from another guy who made a small one. Lupica bought the 13 footer and named it The Cosmic Beam. So the other guy might read this and comment that he got the idea from another guy and on and on and on we go. Maybe God created The Beam and it's just a hand me down.

If you want some sounds to test, which uses theoretical best frequencies for stimulation (28Hz, 33Hz, 125Hz, 250Hz), try the wav files in this file:http://rapidshare.com/files/348220177/33Hz_SexySounds.rar